Reading one word at a time

Monthly Archives: November 2012

1. I finished Henrietta Lacks and Donald Miller’s Blue Like Jazz and have started another book that I haven’t decided if it’s a boo or a yay yet. More to come on that. And posts to come on all that as well. That’s my way of keeping you reading.

2. I got 2 Thanksgivings. Everyone should know by now that I live in the States and that Thanksgiving was last week Thursday. I got one on the actual day and one the Saturday before. Favorite moments from both…. ‘Family nap time!”Monica for holeless pants!’, T’s crazy face, Grandma telling the real Gertrude the Goat story. That’s it. But I felt that I was special becuase I got 2 Thanksgivings. Now to start freaking out about Christmas.

3. I’m done with speakers at work for the year.

4. I’m putting up like 4 Christmas tress at work on Saturday. I like decorating and stuff but this is excessive. It really is.

I was in Bismarck this past weekend getting my car fixed from the knocking out a deer and I stopped into Barnes and Noble. My mom didn’t wanted to stay on the north end and I didn’t want to go get groceries so I got to go to a bookstore all by myself! YAY! While I was there I got Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller.

Now like with a lot of my blogs that end up with me spouting off my opinion about religion and faith, I’m going to warn everyone. This is MY opinion, don’t get angry, I don’t want angry comments or emails. Opinion. Learn to take it. Thanks. But if you do want to discuss, I’m glad to do that. Actually, I hope someone who disagrees with me reads this and comments because I wouldn’t mind picking their brains on how they thing. P.S. this is a longer post for me, so if you read all of it, kudos to you.

First, let’s start with C.S. Lewis. I love him. I loved the Chronicles of Narnia growing up (and the recent movies) and now I love his adult stuff. I always learn something from him. Even when I go back and re-read something, I learn something. Or I catch something different. It just speaks to me every time I read him. My vocabulary expands and new ideas come to me. . I can’t read something by him without marking up the pages with pen and highlighter. (pen for notes and underlining things I like and highlighter for new vocab) If you haven’t read anything by him, you should. Even if you aren’t Christian because he has good ideas and I feel like some of his ideas are good for atheists because he was an atheist. I think he’s so good.

My favorite adult thing from him right now is The Four Loves. Read it. That’s all I have to say right now.

Now, Blue Like Jazz. This was my impulse item, it wasn’t very far from Lewis. I started reading it. But let me back track a little. I heard about this book, originally, when I was living in Bismarck and some of my Christian, Cru friends were raving it. This got stored in the back of my head. Fast forward four years. (How was that for alliteration, right?) I bought it. Thought I would give it a try. I grabbed a pen and started reading it while I was in the car waiting for my to get done getting groceries. I’ve gotten a few chapters into it. Before I tell you what I think about it, let me tell you a little about the book and what reviews say about it on goodreads.

This is a book about Donald who knew God existed and I think he went out into the world searching for a relationship with God. The first couple reviews I read on goodreads, were pretty negative, however amusing. The first one I read made fun of Miller a little. There were a few reviews of the book that were not as fun as the first one I read. Which is fine, they don’t agree with Miller and they have that right. But the farther that I went down the more positive the reviews were.

Now for my opinion. This is for only a couple of chapters into the book. (sorry I don’t have the book with me, I’m waiting to go to a Lions meeting, so no time to go grab it) I kind of want to punch him. I tend to be the opinion of the first review I read of this, I’m not crazy about it and I want to make fun of Miller for how he says things. If you look at the sub-title of the book it’s “Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality”. And that’s what it is. I was reading it last night before I went to sleep and I had to read a couple of sections again to make sure I read them right due to not believing that it was actually written. This book is really getting marked up.

The one thing that Miller said in the book that is standing out in memory today is he that we make simple bible stories for children and that’s where they stay. Example being like when Noah made the arc how many people drowned and we don’t tell kids that, we don’t mention it. The way he had stated it in the book, and again sorry that I can’t give quotes, these stories don’t mature as we do. I’m sitting in bed thinking “Yeah and No”. The way it’s told sometimes, you don’t think of all the people drowning but other times you take that into account in a sermon. I started to question how many sermons this guy had really gone to and paid attention because I remember lots of times where, in a sermon, a pastor will talk about the fatalities in a certain battle or they’ll give a history to complicated for a kid. If you go to some sermons, they’re all fire and brimstone and based on the bible, heck, what’s Revelation all about.

So, obviously I don’t agree totally with this guy. That’s okay, difference in opinion stretches a person. When this book gets finished I’ll have a full post about it and I’ll have the book to have quotes from the author and everything.

For the record I’m still working on the audio version of Henrietta Lacks. It’s just taking me a while. I really like the book and it brings up some interesting moral questions.

Go ahead, comment. If you have read the book, what did you think about it? Does he get into a whole different way of thinking or am I going to have a super long post for this book due to things I picked out from the book? If you disagree with me on something, let me know, I want to understand what you think about stuff like this.